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Monday, 5 July 2010

Poor Casting: The Stretch Armstrong Movie - Pictures :D

So Apparently they’re making a “Stretch Armstrong” movie. For those of you not familiar with the character, Stretch Armstrong is a superhero who can supposedly stretch himself into any form, but will always return to his original shape. So yes, this will just be Fantastic 4 without The Thing, The Human Torch or Susan Storm.

Like this, but without the invisible woman.

Now, I never actually owned a Stretch Armstrong action figure (it’s not a doll!!!!!), but I was always a big fan, repeatedly mentioning him in philosophical debates. Specifically, by asking “if Stretch Armstrong got sucked into a Black Hole, what would happen to him?” (Surprisingly, this tended to generate even more debate than the “if God has always existed, why did he only create the Universe now?” question (in case you were interested, though, it’s because he operates outside of our space and time, and is in a dimension beyond our comprehension. And also technically isn’t a ‘he’. And doesn’t exist. I dunno, there were a lot of people in my Philosophy class…)).

But the reason I’m so pissed off with this movie isn’t because I feel the Stretch is a sacred subject who should not be tackled by movie studios. No, it’s because of who they’ve cast to play him:

That’s right. Taylor fucking Lautner. Just for the record, this is what Stretch Armstrong looks like:

Yeah, Udo Dirkschneider on steroids. Not a pre-pubescent Indian kid with a rat-face.

One of these two is cool. I'll let you decide for yourselves...

Now, granted, I’ve never seen Lautner act, so he could be brilliant, but as a Stretch Armstrong fanboy, I feel it is my duty to base every decision I make purely on how the actor looks, just like those Bond fanboys who were hating on Craig before Casino Royale, when I was supporting him, then insisted Quantum of Solace was brilliant, when it was shit.

Do you see what you've done, fanboys? DO YOU SEE WHAT YOU'VE DONE?!?!??!!! AAAAAAARRRRRGGH!!!!!!

But come on, how the hell is the Werewolf guy from Twilight gonna be able to pull off Stretch Armstrong? Aside from being way too young and not manly enough, the common consensus seems to be that he only gets parts because of the way he looks, and since he doesn’t look right for this part, why the hell has it got it?

I honestly can’t see this turning out well. I suspect it will be on a par with the Spiderman reboot, in which they intend to make the franchise more “gritty” whilst at the same time shooting it in 3D. Because fuck you, that’s why. Seriously, you want to make a movie Gritty so you shoot it using a Gimmick aimed primarily at kids? I swear, next they’ll be shooting Saw 7 in 3D. Oh wait…

There is, however, a chance this kid will pull it off. After all, who would have thought to cast Vin Diesel as James Earl Cash in Manhunt in that alternate reality I just made up in my head? But he was perfect for the role! In light of this, and to celebrate how fantastically bad the studios are at miscasting movies in general, I have decided to make you some pictures of hilarious casting mistakes that we might as well have had over the years. Enjoy!

I was going to open this up as a competition, but since no-one actually reads this Blog, that would be pointless. Instead, I'll just leave this as it is - I hope you enjoyed my attempts at recasting.

Voice

To be honest, I think most of these would be better than the originals...

Yeah, Dolph would be one of the few actors I would actually bother paying to see in this role. The only way the film will be good with Taylor Lautner in is if it's 90 minutes of him on a rack actually being stretched to death.